Tag Archives: Online Communities

Everything’s already a Community

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
1

This post is going to be a variation of the review I wrote on Lunch.com’s SXSW community (client) of a panel called Community Management: Future Skills You’ll Need to Know, and the panelists were @saulcolt @glusman @thorpus @seamuscondron @ambercadabra @sarahprevette. The review I wrote was titled “You already have a community”.

My favorite points from that session were:

  • You can teach anybody social media, but for community management to succeed, it needs to be a senior role.
  • We are in danger of slinging around “community” as this big buzzword, but you ALREADY HAVE COMMUNITY, it’s called your CUSTOMERS!
  • Your community tells you when you have a community
  • If no one is saying your brand sucks on twitter, you’re doing it wrong. You want that opportunity to start that conversation.
  • You can’t tell your community what to do, you can only advise them. You don’t own your community, it’s their community.

Please read my review for more specific notes on that panel. But my big take away from that session was, You already have a community, it doesn’t matter what kind of business you are, or whatever kind of brand you are! This made me realize that even I have a community around my personal brand, and I need to actively manage my community.

I have been thinking about community a lot this last week, and I realized that I often find myself only talking about community as it refers to tech, or tech companies. But EVERYTHING is a community. Both in the physical location sense, and in the sense that you are probably a part of more communities then you realize. I realized that I am a part of the social media community, but I am also a part of the cancer community, the online video community, the vegan community, the health community and the New York City community.

I am interacting with all of these people, across all of these different communities, without even trying! Just my being myself, and that is awesome!

So I wanted everyone to reply in the comments with what communities they feel they interact with every day?

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A friends thoughts on Twitter

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
4

So today I went to my local Apple store with my friend Rosie because her iPhone had gotten the white screen of death and we needed to get it replaced. While hanging out we started talking about Twitter. I was very interested to hear about her experiences with twitter. She has had an account for a while but only started using it regularly this May. She said she started twittering during finals week because she just wanted to tell everyone everything and then she remembered that she could do that with twitter.

She told me that she felt like she didn’t think she was really using it correctly. I told her that there really isn’t a “correct” way to use twitter, but I was curious as to what made her think that.

She had some really interesting insights about how she uses twitter and ways she would like to see it be improved. These were things that I had not really heard from a lot of users or really from the general tech community so I thought I would share them with you all.

The first thing that she felt was missing was a facebook type of “wall-to-wall” view, for your conversations back and forth with one person. I know that there are some apps that do this but Rosie mainly uses the main twitter web page when she is at a computer and twitterific on her iPhone. She would like these features to be built into the main twitter site.
However you can use search.twitter.com/advanced to search for conversations between specific people.

Advanced Twitter Search

She also was really wishing that she could see her list of followers/following in alphabetical order. This was something I never felt the need for but I was really wondering if other people might find this helpful as well.

Rosie also became frustrated that she could not just DM anyone. She wants to be able to have a private conversation with anyone, no matter who is following who. She said that it was kind of strange that you might be able to have a one-way DM conversation if you were DM-ing one of your followers who then could not DM you back because you were not following them.

Her last insight was that she felt that the interface and general feel of twitter was a little childish. She couldn’t really explain why she felt that way, but I thought it was interesting none the less.

If you want to follow her she is @rosesness on twitter.

I would love to hear your thoughts on her thoughts.

Not doing nearly as much as I want to

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
2

OK, I admit it. Tumblr has killed my blog. Well, not really killed it, but it certainly has decreased the time I spend blogging on Random Sarah and looking for new content to blog about.

Last week was Internet Week here in NYC, and in the few days since I have had a lot of time to reflect on this past year of me being a part of this amazing community. I have been spending the majority of my time lately looking for a full time job, and that has put a lot of my passion projects on hold.

I got into this “new media” space because I was passionate about online video and I stumbled upon Social Media by accident. I was perfectly happy going on facebook and reading apple rumor sites. I had almost no desire to be on twitter, to be a blogger or a podcast creator. Then I started watching video podcasts and I realized that I wanted to create content as well.

As much as it seams like I’m busy, I know that it is not an excuse for letting my passion for online video fall off. What’s it All About has hit a few bumps in the road, and I feel as if I am back to square one with the project. However, instead of being discouraged I have decided to modify what I was doing.

Very often people will ask me questions, either on twitter, or via email. For example, the other day someone asked my about #followfriday best practices. I get asked questions about social media all the time. So, I am just going to start answering them on video, here in my room. For right now I am thinking that I will just put these videos up here on Random Sarah because I am not really sure that they are part of the What’s it All About brand, and I’m not really sure what that brand is anymore.

You can ask me questions on twitter or shoot me and email

I would love your feedback since you have all been an amazing part of this journey.

p.s. I am still working on the user generated “I am a geek” video, but so far I only have 5 submissions so keep them coming!

5 things you should consider when designing your web product

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
2

Originally this post was titles 5 reasons I won’t use your web product! But I decided that these were all things that companies could change about their products so I am trying to make it a more positive post.

I get asked to try tons of new sites and services every day. Sometimes people want me to review them on randomsarah.com, sometimes people want them to be considered to be featured on What’s it all About, and many times it’s just friends and other people on twitter telling me about new tools I might not know about.

I love trying out new online tools. It is one of my favorite things to do. But there are a few things right of the bat, that will make me not want to use a site or service.

So here is my list:

1. The Sign-up process: The first thing a new user is going to go through when trying out your site or service, is the Sign-up process. If it is to complicated, or long, I won’t even continue with the process.

Tumblr‘s sign-up page is a great example. 1,2,3 and your DONE!

2. Design: both Graphic Design and User Interface Design. I am a design geek 100%. I love shiny tools. But I have said this many times before, I will not use your product because it’s ugly. When you are starting a site, PLEASE take the time to invest in a good designer. I can promise you that it will pay off. People do judge books by their cover, and they automatically form opinions about your site within the first 5 seconds. Simply based on what it looks like.

For years I did not use GMail because I didn’t want to stare at it all day. I thought it was ugly. Once GMail added themes, I was hooked.

3. Video Tutorial: I can’t tell you how many times I sign up for a service and once I am done with the sign-up process, I have no idea what they want me to do, I have no idea what the service does. This is where I look for an intro video. A simple screencast on how to get started is really all it takes. Sometimes your users need a little push to start using the site. They need to know how, and video is the easiest way to show them.

Screencast video tutorials are very easy to do, but if you can’t do it yourself you can always find people to do it for you.

4. Something like it already exists: This one is a little harder to change, but I think it is worth it when you are creating anything for the web to REALLY see what else is out there. If your site or product is not WAY better than your competition, then people will most likely not give you the shot you deserve. Imitation is not a business model. It is important to create something new and innovative that people will love, and the critical mass will come.

5. Community: While community is not something that belongs as a part of every site, there are some great communities in places when it may not have been obvious that they belong.

Take Yelp for example. Yelp is a site where most people go to find restaurant reviews and other reviews. People can read reviews and write reviews. Now this might not be screaming for a community, but the Yelp community is thriving. You can ask questions, see what your friends are reviewing, create events, there is a ton of stuff to do on Yelp.

Listen to your users, if they are asking for community tools, give it to them. Even if it is just a place to give you feedback or talk about the service, people love community. Creating a strong community will only help your company. Story communities create brand advocates that will be willing to speak on behalf of your product and practically eliminate your need to do any marketing.

Twitter IS NOT the Same As Facebook Status Updates

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
9

Ok, first thing’s first: I hardly EVER do FULL re-blogs on randomsarah.com but when I came across this post by David Spinks, I HAD to re-blog. I get asked this questions SOOO many times, and he breaks it down really well. Give credit where credit is due! So thank you David for this great post!

This post is directed at YOU my Facebook friends! Twitter is NOT the same as Facebook Status Updates!

Isn’t Twitter just like Facebook updates? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this misconception. I think this issue can be attributed to the Twitter homepage’s question “What are you doing?“ This was always the main purpose of Facebook updates, to let your friends now what you’re doing. While this may be an aspect of how people use twitter, it is a small one. Twitter is used for much more which isn’t exactly explained on the homepage.

Facebook has recently remodeled their homepage, making it very similar to Twitter in that users are encouraged to post links, share content and it asks the question “What’s on your mind?“ While some might say that NOW facebook updates and twitter updates are essentially the same, there are still a few very big differences. (note: I’m not saying one is better than the other, rather that they serve different purposes) Here are 5 of the major differences…

1) Focus

Facebook now offers many of the same functions that twitter does. The difference is that Twitter focuses on these functions while Facebook’s live feed is only one of it’s many functions. While this may make facebook a more “well rounded” service, the great amount of functionality options create a a lot of clutter on the site, taking focus away from the feed. When you’re on twitter, you’re there for one reason.

2) Audience

Perhaps the biggest difference between the two services is who reads your updates. On facebook, the only people reading your updates are the people that you are friends with, meaning you both approved the friendship. When you post a message on twitter you are talking to the world. Unless you keep your tweets private (an uncommon practice on twitter) anyone can search twitter and find your tweets. Additionally, the people who receive your tweets in their homepage feed are anyone who’s interested enough to follow you, whether or not you follow them back. This allows you to connect with anyone, not just who you already know.

3) Conversation

On the facebook feed, the conversation around an update comes in the form of comments that are listed under the update. This greatly limits the amount of conversation you can have because it does not encourage the person who posted the original update to partake in the conversation any further. Also, on twitter, if someone replies to an update, the conversation stays relevant because people continue to read about it. On facebook, once the original update moves down the feed, so does the conversation. Both facebook and twitter provide a private message option; facebook uses a direct messaging system and provides a private chat window while twitter only provides the direct message.

4) Retweets

Twitter makes it much easier for valuable content to go viral than facebook. Someone can always post the link again but this is not as easy, or effective as twitter’s retweet. To add on to the audience issue, when you post a link on facebook, only your friends can find it. On twitter if you post a link, anyone can find it and share it with their followers using retweets.

5) Searchability

You can search the content on twitter. If you’re looking for posted links or any other content, just go to search.twitter.com and search keywords. There is no way to search the facebook feed. You either have to just keep scrolling, or remember who posted the update and check their feed.

So…in conclusion

The facebook feed and twitter may seem very similar in concept, however they are very different in purpose. Still not convinced? Here’s a very general comparison…

Facebook is a great way to see what your friends are doing. Twitter is a great way to see what the world is doing (friends included).